Our well established and highly rated SENCo network provides an opportunity for both new and experienced SENCos to stay up to date with the latest national and local SEN developments and also access high-quality professional development to not only support them in their own role but to take back to share with colleagues in school.
We meet termly in a range of locations or online and always start with a focus on the national updates from the DfE, Ofsted, recent research and guidance in the area of SEND. We then have one or two areas of focus for the rest of the meeting which centre around specific areas of SEND and the strategic role of the SENCO. Often we provide a ‘SEND Take Away’ – a ready-made CPD training pack that SENCOs can deliver back in school to support the expertise of staff in a given area of SEND. There’s always time to network and share common areas of challenge and good practice. The focus of our termly meetings are driven by the current needs of the group which are informed by our SENCo steering group and evaluations from previous sessions.
Once a year we have our SENCo Conference which brings together our whole network for an inspiring day exploring new and innovative practice. The focus for our conference is driven by the needs of the network and provides an opportunity to hear from a number of exciting guest speakers. For details of previous speakers see below.
All network meeting resources, recordings and useful links are made available to network members and their schools, via our online resource hub housed on our website. All network members receive personal access to this area to ensure that they can access resources quickly and easily throughout the year.
Our SEN Conferences provide an opportunity for our network to hear directly from a range of national and/or international guest speakers and are a real highlight within the year. Previous conference speakers have included: